


Rite of Morning

by paperiuni



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Wake-Up Sex, aesthetic appreciation of Dorian's cock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 08:11:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7566742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bull wakes up to find himself in great admiration of the prickly Tevinter in his bed. He and Dorian make the most of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rite of Morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JustJasper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustJasper/gifts).



> For Jasper, who was an inspiration.
> 
> Thanks to: Katie for clamouring for Bull getting fucked, Toft for clamouring for fic, and Riss for looking this over. ♥
> 
> Yes, all those tags are relevant. I'll see myself out.

  
_Good morning, lover, give me your hand_  
_The day begins and it's all that we have_  


\-- Vienna Teng

*  


The first rime of autumn has crept across the panes of Bull's window in the night. It obscures the clouded glass even more, turning the sunrise into diffuse bars of pink across the floor.

They're off to the east and some ailing village called Crestwood today. Fereldan geography isn't Bull's strong suit, though this job's turned out to be quick schooling in the discipline. He yawns and turns halfway into the warm hollow Dorian left in the sheets.

In the space between sleep and waking, Bull strays into pondering if it's the cooling weather or enduring curiosity that's been keeping Dorian in his bed. They've been fucking for long enough that it holds a sense of routine--not something to be expected, but a hope that's answered with some regularity.

Last night, Dorian wandered in with his nose in a book, a writing tablet under his arm. He sat with his ankles crossed on Bull's bed and drew indecipherable diagrams annotated in Tevene while Bull finished his packing. Bull made tea; Dorian took a portion in the last of the red clay mugs Bull got in Rivain ten years ago. Dorian made a pleased comment on the taste; Bull smiled in crooked agreement.

They slept back to back on distinct sides of the bed, and towards morning, Dorian tucked his chilly hands under Bull's arm and laid his head on it.

He lay awake a time, aware of Dorian's slow, rhythmic breaths, before sliding back under.

Now Bull listens to him move around the room: water rushes into the washbasin, and the jug clatters as Dorian replaces it on the shelf. His bare feet slap on the floor. The water must be cold, which elicits a groan as he splashes his face.

Outside, the ruined western tower is covered in migrating birds holding cacophonous court. They're answered by the sounds of the bailey: the smiths stirring the forge to white heat, the night watch slouching to bed in the barracks.

Bull toys with the idea of closing his eye for a while more.

"Are you still asleep?" Dorian's voice, from the foot of the bed. "You do recall we're leaving today?"

"Not before noon. Some arl's guard-captain rode in last night, needed to see the boss. Bet you a drink that she won't go without hearing him out."

"I suppose. Where did you hear this?" 

"Stepped out to the tavern. You were frowning at some really squiggly part." Dorian's pile of notes spreads across the top of the chest next to Bull's bed. The chest that holds most of his things. Dorian didn't precisely ask to use it as a spare table.

"They're _complex abjuration patterns_ , not 'squiggles'. You'll be glad for them the next time we run into demons." Dorian appears in Bull's slitted field of vision, scrubbing at his face with a towel. His hair falls finger-combed and too long into his eyes. He must've thought the contents of Bull's washstand hilariously inadequate for getting presentable.

He looks good. Haphazard and fucking delectable.

Bull nearly says that--not like Dorian has the sole right to fancy words--then hesitates.

"Sure." He rolls a shoulder against the bed. The joint creaks. "Thank you, spiniest of 'Vints, for blasting 'em to bits before I can sink my axe into them. Steal all the fun, will you?"

The night before petered out without even ribald banter between them. Dorian likes his space and his airs in public, but in private he's got a mouth on him like a Llomerryn dock poet.

"With you in the fray, one has to fight for one's share." Dorian leans over the footboard. "Not to mention your gift for gossip. You just plucked this captain's arrival out of the air like a dandelion seed."

"Nah. It was easier than that." Bull has keen ears and an approachable manner. They work little wonders in a place like The Herald's Rest.

"I believe that. I spent a few childhood summers chasing those little villains in vain."

The mental image is swift, and Bull cracks into laughter before he can think twice. "That's dignified."

"In my defence, I was approximately six." Dorian has a glimmer. "Then my magic manifested, and I learned to set them on fire. Poof, and there was nothing. Not even smoke." He accompanies this with an eloquent waggle of fingers.

"Sounds like somebody had a grudge." Bull should get up, dress and see to his warm-up. He hasn't been on horseback for a while, and the first day of riding is made up of steep downhill trails.

"What can I say? I've always set my sights on lofty goals." Dorian turns a touch too quickly to his clothes, laid on one of Bull's three chairs. He slept in yesterday's shirt, which covers him to half-thigh.

"Gonna go make more faces at your glyphs?" Dorian's probably not packed yet, either.

"I should." Still, Dorian reverses his movement, meets Bull's gaze. His eyes are a particular kind of early-morning bright, awake but not yet set on the day and its travails.

Bull wants him. Wants him in a way that twines together the sleepy weight of his head on Bull's arm, and the taste of his mouth if Bull were to draw him down for a kiss.

When Dorian stays still, Bull presumes to catch one strong, fine-boned wrist in a loose grip.

"I see you have another suggestion." Maybe something more is couched in Dorian's acquiescence, but all the same, he bends down easy to meet Bull's mouth. His knees dent the bed as he finds his place, one hand pressed to the pillow beside Bull's head.

The kiss lingers. Bull tastes sage and salt on Dorian's tongue from his tooth-cleaning mixture, a bitter hint of rinsing wine.

"Mmmh. Have I been remiss?" The question has soft edges, soft as Dorian's thumb on Bull's throat, stroking back and forth.

"No obligations here, big guy," Bull reminds him. Good. This is a familiar track. Safer to go down this one than the rambling byroads about Dorian asleep in his bed, making thoughtless use of Bull's things, claiming space in the room as if it were his rightful due.

"Some hopes, surely." Dorian draws his curled fingers down Bull's chest, cool on the skin still warm from the blankets. "One would rather be more than suffered."

"You got me."

Sufferance wouldn't have brought them this far. Sometimes the best answer is a night's indulgence and a candid parting. At other times, Bull will slip out of bedchambers well before dawn and not look back. Dorian, though, is shaping into a different question.

"Would you care to share some of those hopes?" A wet, teasing kiss. Bull holds Dorian down by the back of his head and feels him shift a leg over Bull's thigh. Even with the blanket between them, the tremor of want is palpable.

"Rather hear yours," Bull says into Dorian's mouth. Fuck, but he could just kiss Dorian until noon, until his lips swelled dark and damp. The thought loops in on itself, curiously circular. Sex, as he was taught, has a point: comfort, distraction, release.

"What a boorish man I'm planning to tumble." Dorian laughs. "He invites me into his bed and hasn't even thought of how to entertain me."

"You walked in here and slapped down your notes all over my box of tools." Not the whole truth, but a serviceable comeback. "Now who's being rude?"

Dorian inhales harshly as Bull slides a hand under his loose shirt, his stomach flexing under questing fingers. Bull follows the trail of hair up towards his navel, then farther. His right nipple draws into a hard peak under the circles Bull strokes on it.

"I--I admit to my slight." Dorian grips Bull's shoulder for balance. Bunching the shirt with his hand, Bull closes his mouth on the nipple, teases it with a flat tongue, bites down upon it so he leaves fading purple marks in the skin. Dorian squirms, a lovely, full-body shudder.

He's pushing it a bit, showing off. Bull doesn't mind; seems they've both got too many things on their mind today.

"However," Dorian says, gasping, "since we've both been less than courteous, I might propose amends."

"Oh yeah?" Bull wants him out of the shirt and the blanket out from between them.

Dorian obliges his unvoiced whim by pulling the shirt off. "If neither of us knows, we might put our bright minds together. You choose a thing, then I the next. We have time, as you say."

"We do," Bull agrees. "How do you define 'thing'? If I want to jerk you off, do you get to pick how? Can I decide something that cuts you off from choosing until we're done with it?" He traces a fingertip over Dorian's nipple, delighted by how the touch keeps hitching his breaths.

"I trust you to keep it sporting."

In the spreading orange of the dawn, Dorian has a deep copper glow to his skin. The summer burned him even darker in the face and arms, and Bull lets himself be distracted by the blurred line of the tan along his shoulder.

Forget about the departure. Get lost in Dorian's skin. It seems a fine idea, for a moment. Wander the familiar curve of his spine and the dip above his ass, the inline of his hip and the firming jut of his cock.

"Well?"

Dorian is looking at him with half-lidded eyes, his lip between his teeth. Does he realise he's doing that? Bull touches his chin to make him release the bite. It'd be hot, but there's a query in Dorian's bearing.

"Sure you've heard it before," Bull says, "but you've got a fantastic cock."

Dorian--abruptly, adorably--splutters. "A time or two. Do go on."

Bull doesn't doubt the truth of that: if Dorian's had half the lovers he likes to imply he has, he's heard every variation of praise for the merits of his physique. A number of times, Bull's murmured them in a low litany while Dorian inched towards a shuddering peak on little more than his words.

This is not the same. Bull runs the crook of his thumb along Dorian's cock, feeling it thicken and warm under his hand.

Dorian has one eye open, cinched with mirth and curiosity. "You're staring. Is this some peculiar Qunari thing? A nuance I'm missing?"

"Contemplating beauty is a serious philosophical _thing_ under the Qun." Then, since Bull can, he makes Dorian quiver by stroking the small tender span under the head. Over and over, with light, ghosting pressure. His own breath catches on Dorian's moan.

"I'm thinking something simpler, though." Dorian is fully hard in his grasp now, the gorgeous, sturdy curve of his cock twitching. "I want you to fuck me."

His mouth twisting between surprise and a smile, Dorian drops a hand in the middle of Bull's chest. "You scoundrel. Here I was expecting something far more decadent."

"Can't live scandalously all the time." Yet the moment has an edge of defiance. Sex is a recourse. It should be good, it can be glorious, but Bull knows he should be sticking his focus on Dorian from a different angle. _What do you need?_

This aimless, brimming want. The only thing it centers on is Dorian himself. He has a beautiful cock, and Bull has dwelt awhile on how it'd feel to take him, but that's the shallow shore of a deepening river.

"All right," Dorian says, and kisses him, hungry and sharp. For a moment there's nothing but the kiss, heady and purposeful, Bull biting into Dorian's lip so as to court bruises. Their breaths come in jagged waves, tumbling against each other. "I suppose we need something--"

"In the chest." Bull groans into Dorian's cheek as realisation dawns. "Get your damn papers off it."

With great aplomb for his breathless arousal, Dorian heaps his notes on the floor to ease open the lid. Bull rolls over to point him to a particular jar, and Dorian scrambles back into the bed with a handful of arrowflower balm raised like a prize. It's skin-warm when Dorian takes Bull's hand and coats his fingers in the stuff; a dash of magic there, Bull presumes.

"My turn then," Dorian says, sweeping away Bull's idle thought. "Open yourself up. Properly, please, so I may fuck you as one should."

Bull feels himself thrum with both lust and amusement. "And how's that done, exactly?"

"With exhilaration," Dorian says, and something in his tone scratches in his throat, "and without fear."

Beyond the window, the bailey wakes with the sunrise. The quartermaster emerges to squabble with a merchant; the brewers cart sacks of malted grain past the soldiers crowding the training yard. The old glass panes can't keep the noises at bay, but they dwindle into the background. 

Here, in the bed, Bull lets himself hear and see only Dorian.

For a moment, they scuffle for position, a game more than a genuine attempt for the upper hand. They both know how that'd end; unless that is the game, Bull holds himself in check. Dorian still ends up gasping on his back, half of the balm smeared into his hair and shoulder, smothering bouts of laughter.

Bull doesn't break into his merriment. It does him good. It does Bull good to see him like that.

Once sobered, Dorian lies back into Bull's wildly disparate pillows and makes a small, imperious gesture. "If we could get back on track?"

"Did we wander off?" Bull raises a brow as he kneels over Dorian's legs, pulling the open jar back into his hand. The sheets are a tangled mess, but at least he'll be on the road before the launderers see them.

"Perhaps not." Dorian trails his fingertips over the gnarled scar on Bull's left knee, then lets them roam up his thighs.

He watches avidly as Bull works his fingers inside himself. Short, curled motions, eased by the slick balm. Keeping his breaths deep, Bull returns the challenge glowing in Dorian's stare by being thorough. He's had Dorian's fingers in his ass, spell-heated and clever, finer than his own. They drag up the length of his cock now instead, and _shit_ , Dorian's clearly not content to observe anymore.

"Point taken." Bull grins down at Dorian with every fibre of guff left in him. He strokes a firm fist over Dorian's cock, swallowing at the feel of him, at the slight tingle of the arrowflower. It barely pricks his palm, but Dorian jerks and curses under the sensation.

"Oh. Oh, and yours as well, I believe."

Bull doesn't tell him how he looks in that moment, wild and wanton, his eyes wide. He just sets a hand on Dorian's shoulder, Dorian hooking a grip behind his elbow, and sinks down the smooth length of Dorian's cock until their hips slot together.

Dorian moans. His feet flatten to the bed, his knees rise, as he presses up against Bull.

He'd make Bull's knees buckle if they weren't securely planted. Bull drops his head forward and shakes, allows himself to focus on the feeling of Dorian: his cock, his breaths, his skin. Mastery of the self is at the root of the Qun. Indulgence is wasteful, desire is selfish. Yet, if this is madness, if anything Dorian is could threaten to unmake him--

Dorian's fingers scrabble on Bull's face, too forceful for a caress. "Move," Dorian grits out. "Void take you, move."

Bull has no words to answer him, so action must do. Dorian's hand stills against Bull's mouth and his choppy breaths as Bull finds a pace, one as hard as he can keep up. They both fall into it, voices muted into harsh gasps and half-verbal goads. The shifts of the bed and flesh striking flesh are the only other sounds in the room.

Time crawls. Bull stops Dorian from fumbling at his cock, though he aches for the touch. Dorian's fingers stay in his feverish grip. In quick glimpses, Bull takes in the mess of his hair on the pillow, the oval of his mouth, the taut tendons of his throat.

Only when Bull's groan spills into pain, his knee sending up a pang of hurt, Dorian opens his eyes. There's no remorse flaring behind the haze in them, only a resolution. "On your back. Let me do the work for a while."

They've had this argument in a few forms. Bull has no heart nor wherewithal for it now. He'll finish a fight or climb a hill even on a twingeing knee, but here, it's a hurdle that can be set aside. He rises so Dorian slides out of him, then thumps into the rumpled nest of sheets Dorian left vacant. The linens stick to his sweat-covered back.

Worry ripples in Dorian's expression as he fits himself in between Bull's knees. Bull shakes loose a wry laugh, brushing back Dorian's hair as if he could smooth his brow in the same gesture. "No room for that here, 'Vint."

"I know." Dorian leans in. His shaft skims Bull's hole, and the way they both start tugs a laugh from him. "Oh, Maker, I know."

"Good." Bull gathers his wits; a game effort, if not a resounding success. Dorian gives in as Bull cants his chin down. They can't kiss like this, but the air curls heavy and electric between them. "So fuck me. Properly."

Dorian's smile is all teeth and heat. He begins a more patient tempo, long crests of movement that rush all the way to Bull's toes. They wrench a few ragged words from Bull, among them _deeper_ and _please_ , and Dorian follows his demand. Bull clutches an arm around Dorian, bowing him low over himself. Digging his fingers into the mattress for support, Dorian quickens the rhythm. Every now and then he holds a stroke, buried deep, and withdraws with a leashed languor.

"Hah," Bull says, husking. "Turning my own tricks on me. Damn you."

"Please," Dorian manages, "as if I was an innocent before we met."

He punctuates that with a snap of his hips. Bull loses his counterargument in the welter of sensation that creeps up his spine. The want is a smooth slope, stunning in its advance. Thought fractures into brief sensory impressions: Dorian's hair knotted in his fingers. Dorian's mouth, wet and wavering on his collarbone. The dull twitch in his knee, eclipsed by pleasure.

Then, at last, Dorian presses a thumb tight behind his balls and fucks him in short, unmerciful thrusts until he pants his way into a throbbing orgasm.

"Oh fuck," he mutters, clenched around Dorian's sweet cock and his wicked, shaky laughter. "Fuck, fuck, Dorian, there you are."

It subsides, as it has to, in slow pulses. When Dorian comes, half in him, half on his belly, in a messy spasm of completion, Bull muffles his gasps with a kiss that ends up more breath and spit than contact. Dorian slides off onto Bull's left, a lax arm dropped across his chest.

The light has filled out into the warm silver of a crisp Kingsway day. It stretches along the rough-hewn stones of the ceiling, limning their seams, divots and dents.

"There you are," Dorian echoes, with a cadence of contemplation. "Makes one think we should do this more often."

"Pipe down a moment, will you?" Bull says it gently.

Canting his head back so it lies tucked against Bull's shoulder, Dorian does. The nearness is calm again, like last night, filled with only itself. A quiet that they make together.

Bull listens to Dorian breathe, and doesn't count the moments until they have to rise.


End file.
